Notices by The Psychotic Network Ferret (nuintari@mastodon.bsd.cafe)

nuintari's rules of networking 0x2e:

IPv6 is not more complicated than IPv4, nor does it suffer from compatibility problems. People who still believe these myths are simply being obstinate.

@uberbrady @risottobias Okay, show me this vaunted incompatibility that is apparently everywhere. Name me an even remotely modern operating system that doesn't support IPv6. Show me on the protocol doll which modern protocols haven't had IPv6 for years now. Show me a modern application that doesn't support IPv6 that isn't also a horrendously closed off and proprietary solution. APIs, libraries, utilities, documentation, IPv6 support is in all of it and has been for _well_ north of a decade now.

You can run dual-stack, you can run 6to4 translation, you can go full hog wild native, you can tunnel it. YOU HAVE OPTIONS FOR DEPLOYMENT, and none of them will break your shit unless you are beyond careless and clueless.

I've worked for three ISPs that have successfully deployed IPv6 to end users and core services. You know the hardest customers to get connected in v6? IT professionals who think they know networking. If it ships with IPv6 on, they will turn it off. If it ships off, it's gonna stay that way. They don't think they need it, they don't understand, and they don't want to understand it. IT professionals who don't want to learn anything new are the single biggest obstacle remaining to IPv6 adoption. I've been fighting for heavy adoption of IPv6 for over 15 years now, and the uphill battle has always been bullshit beliefs and abject laziness from barely competent IT professionals.

Don't even get me started on the blight that is the modern MSP.

Sorry if that was a bit harsh, I'm tired of this argument, plus I just got off a truly irritating phone call. You'll forgive me if I don't check for spelling and skipped words.

tl;dr: you are right, you are wrong, you are very wrong.

@risottobias @uberbrady

1) You don't "upgrade" to IPv6, you offer it inline with IPv4. It has never been a forklift replacement (there is another rule about this).

2) I have worked for numerous ISPs over the years, big and small. Way more than three I can tell you, and the small ones are almost always the ones pushing IPv6 hardest, because CGNAT is fucking expensive. The big ISPs are the ones who are ignoring it. I've only worked for one small ISP that was opposed to it, and their attitude changed when they ran out of IPv4 space, and saw their choices. CGNAT or buy more space on the open market.

So I hear you on that side, not everyone can get native IPv6. That is a true issue.

But holy hell, the number of networks I have worked at where we pushed IPv6 without incident damn near everywhere. And then I'd get a call escalated to me from some IT "pro" demanding I remove IPv6 support from his service because it wasn't ready for production use and how dare I enable for it our customers.

I had working native IPv6 on TWC in 2016 when I ordered the service. When Spectrum bought TWC, they actually ripped out IPv6 support. I didn't get it back until last year.

The dumbassery is everywhere, and none of it is IPv6s fault. It's shitastic people.

Oh, and I just caught that claim about IPv6 being pricey.

BULL FUCKING SHIT. Pure and utter nonsense.

nuintari's rules of networking 0x4d:

Your network naming convention should be specific enough to inform the operator what facility a device is located within, and what said device's role is on the network. It should be generic enough that neither moving the device to a different rack nor replacing the hardware with a different model will require a name change.

#FreeBSD 14.3!!!!

Time to blow this onto the laptop and test drive this new wireless I've geen hearing about.

Some computer problems really amaze me. They are truly self inflicted pains in the ass.

For example, log rotation.

We have:

foo
foo.0.gz
foo.1.gz
foo.2.gz
...
foo.N.gz

So, for every log rotation cycle, you:
delete foo.N.gz
rename foo.N-1.gz foo.N.gz
all the way to:
rename foo to foo.0 and compress

This is not even remotely simple.

The way I do it?

foo-<datestamp>

I run two cronjobs to deal with this.

One, adjusts the symlink of foo to foo-<datestamp> to the most current file. A very basic shell script.
The other, deletes logfiles older than <retention period>. A find command, nothing more.

Optional third cronjob compresses logfiles older than, "I hope I don't need these" period.

So, for "now" logs, I just check "foo".
I usually default to daily rotations, so I have a lot of symlinks that look like this:

/var/log/auth -> /var/log/secure/auth-<YYYYMMDD>
/var/log/sudo -> /var/log/secure/sudo-<YYYYMMDD>
/var/log/daemon -> /var/log/system/daemon-<YYYYMMDD>

For some bigger installations, I have broken it up more, but daily usually works for me. I have also resorted to directory hashing like YYYY/MM/DD.HH, for entities that generate shitloads of logs. Instead of running a rotation script that touches every single logfile, I only care about the current one. Once logfiles are closed, they are closed forever, never renamed, unless I wanted to compress them.

But my point? The default behavior is, honestly kind of stupid. The defaults for so much software are so terribly stupid.

I cannot believe I have to keep saying this, but:

STOP PUTTING SHIT ON GITHUB. PERIOD.

Github was never good, and then Microsoft bought it, and it went from shit out my ass..... to lick my fucking asscrack you fucking cuck.

STOP USING GITHUB.

@silverwizard ctrl+a is basically the HOME key, it will return you to the start of line.

ctrl+b conflicts with nothing. That is why it is the sane control character.

I knew this 17 years ago, and still decided to fight against it, in the name of muscle memory.

I was fucking wrong.

I switched to tmux soon after the initial release, roughly 17 years ago.

less than three months ago, I finally pushed through accepting ctrl+b as the control character. I had started using GNU Screen maybe a year prior to the release of tmux, and fought against ctrl+b in favor of Screen's ctrl+a for nearly 17 years.

I finally changed.

It was nothing. I avoided change for 17 years, and for nothing. The change took me hours, not even days.

Reason: ctrl+a does other useful shit.

@BeAware I feel seen.

@sidereal @nullagent Not really, I've been telling people that Microsoft was a massive problem since the 1990s, and no one has ever listened.

They continue to be a massive problem, yet are continuing to expand the scope of their issues, and they aren't going anywhere.

What they have done is prove that they can be absolutely heinous, and nothing will actually change. I can be right all I want, but Microsoft still wins in the end.

@Blueteamsherpa This. ^^^

I've studied history my entire life, I have chosen to specialize in the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, and the ensuing shitfest.

This is 100% accurate. Nothing BTS has said is an exaggeration. Every single bit of it is terrible and true.

@silverwizard Running a business to generate sustainable income is the old way.

Running a business to generate maximum profits for shareholders on a three month basis, and the future be damned! is the new way of almighty capitalism.

Neither are compatible with how you run a government. But most people who believe in Trump believe he will do the first, when in reality, he is using government to take option 2 to eleven and beyond across the entire NYSE.

@silverwizard Well, efficiency is a great way to get people on board on basically anything.

Like believing that government should be run like a business. Government does not exist to generate revenue, it exists to provide services to, and to protect its citizens.

or at least it is supposed to do that.

But the GOP ran up such a massive operating debt, that now, people think we need a solid business man to reduce it.

never mind that the Republicans are the ones that caused the debt in the first place, and every time they are in power, the party of fiscal conservancy is great at doubling or tripling the national debt.

A thought.

A true department of government efficiency would seek to bypass any and all government checks and balances, because they are, by very definition, not very efficient.

Fascism is far more efficient than Democracy. This doesn't mean it is better. I am an engineer, and I recognize that not everything is an engineering pipeline. Being an "efficient" government probably means you are at best cutting corners, at worst, violating human rights.

Efficiency is not always, or even often, the best measure of, "good."

Massive issue with GNU Screen:

https://security.opensuse.org/2025/05/12/screen-security-issues.html

Suggestion: Start using tmux 17 years ago.

hey #infosec #bsd #networking #security friends, anyone know of a good, regularly updated list of know DNS over HTTPS servers?

I'm making my blocking of them way better using an awesome new feature I discovered this morning in #JunOS called dynamic-address, which allows me to update an address entry from a remote webserver.

So, need updated list of DoH servers, translate to JunOS friendly format, push to local webserver, let the firewall update periodically.

I really should blog this shit, I can't be the only person who could use this.

I have a question I have started asking at the beginning of any interview. "Does this organization use MS Office, and specifically Teams and Outlook for collaboration, or something else?"

If the answer isn't something else, I tell them I am no longer interested in the job and decline to continue the interview further.

This has absolutely flummoxed and irritated more than a few people, but this is my line for my own sanity. I'd rather push a broom than use Outlook and Teams again. I realize that this is limiting my career choices quite a bit. But in a world where we are always telling each other to look out for our own mental health, this is something I need in order to stay sane. I can't spend any amount of time arguing with bad software when I'd rather be getting shit done and not fall completely off my rocker.

So, I'm adding a second question now. "What is the organization's position on AI and its use for work?"

I think you can guess what kind of answers will make me walk away.

@tante Pay extra money to make it even easier to steal my personal information so you can advertise to me more effectively, for a feature I'll never use that virtually nobody is asking for?

AI is like blockchain, it's a solution looking for a problem. A lot of the things I see AI being heralded for are problems we solved with "basic" automation and some math 20 years ago for a fraction for a fraction of the cost.

@dexter Wow.... I am completely qualified!

I have written a looooot of CGI Perl on Apache in my day, the vast majority of it spent grumbling about how I wasn't allowed to use PostgreSQL instead.

It's just funny, I rarely see calls for that skillset anymore.